It’s great to have a website, but how will people find it amongst the gazillions of other websites out there? Since the majority of people use search engine websites like Google and Yahoo! to find what they're after, it’s worth putting some time into making your website ‘tasty’ to these search engines so that links to your website appear prominently in those search results. This presentation was given at Create 2009, a conference geared to help Christians be more creative and professional in using technology and design to promote the gospel. It's quite general, and intended for a broad -- rather than technical and industry-knowledgeable -- audience.

1. Ben Crothers | 14 Nov 2009

2.  I am a
user experience designer/
business consultant
 I really enjoy
helping churches online/anything 2.0/painting
 Work: PTG Global as a Senior Consultant
 Blog: catchmedia.com.au
 Twitter: @bencrothers

3.  Search engine optimisation (SEO) =
getting your website higher in organic search
engine results based on its relevance according
to the keywords searched for, and how the
search engine indexes results
 Search engine marketing (SEM) =
Paying money on keyword-based campaigns to
get your website higher in paid search engine
results, based on keyword bidding

4.  Three areas to focus on for optimisation:
The code
The content
Link popularity

5.  Why do you want people to come to your
website?
 Specific answers help make SEO efficient. e.g.
your church:
 Is the best one for a certain range of suburbs
 Is well-known for excellent sermons
 Is passionate about holding community events
 Has great worship music and kids' groups

6.  Recommended to use a content management
system (CMS) for group authoring and
consistency, but bear in mind:
 Standards-compliant code?
 Access to title tags and meta tags?
 Full access to all content throughout?
 Allow for keyword-rich website addresses (URLs),
instead of www.church.org.au/?x=7&y=huh?
 Recommended: Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress

7.  Check website traffic reports or Google
Analytics
 Ask around your congregation
 Some words you use may not be what others
on the outside use
 Use keyword suggestion tools
 Google Adwords Keyword Tool:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

9.  Use most (all if you can) keywords on
home page
 Use keywords throughout text of each page,
especially in headings, sub-headings and
link text
 Be careful of keyword density: 2% to 8%
 Keyword Density Check Tool: www.linkvendor.com/seo-
tools/keyword-density.html

10.  <title> tags, e.g.
 'Family-friendly church in the inner west –
Drummoyne Presbyterian Church'
 Not 'Home'
 Meta tags, including description and keywords
 Alt attributes in image tags, e.g.
 'Church front door': good
 'Front door of our church, replaced after a fire in
1948': better

12.  Register other domains that include your
keywords and point them to your main website
 e.g. www.drummoynechurch.com
 Make URLs to specific pages rich in keywords
 e.g. www.drummoyne.org.au/drummoyne-church-
events.html

13.  Google is big enough to find you
 Register with other search engines and
directory websites
 DMOZ – www.dmoz.org
 startlocal – www.startlocal.com.au
 TrueLocal – www.truelocal.com.au

14.  Getting other websites to link to yours, to
increase your website's link popularity
 Website relevance = number of inbound links
 But not all links are equal...

15.  PageRank
 = how important Google thinks a page is
compared to all other pages
 Number between 1 and 10
 Derived from:
 Number of inbound links to the page
 The PageRank of those pages that link
 Relevance of words searched for on those pages
 Number of actual visits to that page

16.  How do you get inbound links?
 Foster relationships with community websites
 Encourage church members to link from blogs,
Facebook and Twitter
 Donate content to other websites for links back
 Tweet like crazy with diverse hashtags
 Leave comments on other blogs (respectfully)
with links back to your website

17.  Tune up your SEO like a car
 'Rules of the game' change over time, and your
website's content focus will change over time
 Check on which websites are linking to yours
 http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/link-popularity-checker.shtml
 http://www.google.com/analytics
 Paid tracking and reporting service:
Raven SEO Tools
 http://raven-seo-tools.com/

18.  Hire someone skilled in web development,
standards-compliance and SEO/M
 Once-off SEO assessment and recommendations
 Once-off optimisation with guidelines
 DIY SEM? Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns can
be time-consuming, distracting, and potentially
profitless

19.  Ben Crothers
 Blog: catchmedia.com.au
 Twitter: @bencrothers
 See also:
 Google guidelines:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
 Yahoo! guidelines:
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/deletions/index.html